Teen killed elderly father over Ferrari, Crown says

A Vancouver teen murdered his elderly father after getting into an argument with him over the purchase of a Ferrari, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Alexander Shevalev has pleaded not guilty to the March 2015 second-degree murder of his dad, 80-year-old Vladimir Shevalev, in the father’s tony highrise condo in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour.

In his opening statement, Crown counsel Patrick Fullerton said that, a few days before the murder, the accused stole about $100,000 from his father’s bank accounts to buy a used Ferrari.

With his friend, Nawid Sami, the accused attended a car dealership and bought the luxury car on Feb. 24, 2015, the prosecutor told a B.C. Supreme Court jury.

Four days later, after the dad learned of the theft and the subsequent purchase of the vehicle, he asked his son to bring the car to his residence at the Shaw Tower at 1077 West Cordova St., said Fullerton.

Then, on March 1, 2015, the dad contacted his son, who was 19 years old at the time, and demanded that he come to his home and sign the car over to him, said the Crown.

“Soon after the accused and Mr. Sami arrived, the accused and his father argued about the car and the theft of the money,” he said. “This argument took place in the kitchen area in front of Mr. Sami. During the argument, the deceased called his lawyer about obtaining legal title to the Ferrari.”

The dad left the kitchen and went to the master bedroom to continue his call with the lawyer, resulting in the son becoming angry and taking an object from a kitchen cupboard and proceeding toward the bedroom, said Fullerton.

“Mr. Sami then heard two bangs. Mr. Sami went to the master bedroom and saw the accused choking his father from behind. Next, the accused, with Mr. Sami’s assistance, moved Vladimir’s body to the bed in the master bedroom.”

The accused then took a blood-pressure monitor that was already in the bedroom and tried to get a reading from his deceased father, after which the two men left the apartment, said Fullerton.

“From there, Mr. Sami and the accused drove to various locations in downtown Vancouver, stopping first to get some cocaine, snorting it, and then going off to a strip club.”

There were a series of phone calls between the accused and his mother and the accused and his brother, who was worried because he couldn’t get hold of the father, said the prosecutor.

After Sami dropped off the accused at the mother’s residence across the street from Shaw Tower, the mother and son asked the concierge at the Shaw Tower to check on the father, he said.

When the concierge went to the father’s apartment, the father’s body was discovered on the bed, said Fullerton.

The Crown told the 12-member jury the accused gave a number of statements that showed his description of what happened changing over time, with the accused describing conduct from which one could conclude the death was the result of an accident, he said.

By the time Shevalev gave a statement to police in June 2015 describing his interactions with his dad, a forensic pathologist had concluded an autopsy on the victim and made findings in relation to the cause of death, said the prosecutor.

The findings of the pathologist were closely guarded by the police and described as holdback evidence, known only to the pathologist, the police and Vladimir’s killer, he said.

“In his (police) statements on June 10 and 11, the accused’s explanation took into account that holdback evidence.”

Fullerton cautioned the jury they would hear from Sami that he didn’t phone police on the day of the slaying and gave several statements to police that weren’t always truthful.

He said that, in assessing Sami’s evidence, the jury would have to consider whether it was corroborated by other evidence.

The trial is expected to continue today.